Ganesh Sittampalam's research was funded for two years by EPSRC, via a "Realising Our Potential Award". Such awards are made to research groups that do substantial collaborative research with industry, and they are intended to fund risky, blue-skies research. The Programming Tools Group received such an award in 2002.

Among the deliverables of this research are novel higher-order matching algorithms (continuing Ganesh's DPhil research), an incremental algorithm for solving universal path queries, and an optimising compiler for AspectJ.

The project was reviewed by a panel of experts, and here are the results:

• Research Quality: internationally leading
• Research Planning and Practice: internationally leading
• Potential Scientific Impact: internationally leading
• Output of Research Staff: Outstanding
• Communication of Research Results: Outstanding
• Potential Benefits to Society: tending to Outstanding
• Cost Effectiveness: Outstanding